My International Women's Day

All I want to do right now is punch someone in the face. More specifically, I would like to hit and curse at a man wearing a jeans jacket that says "fanaa" in red letters on the back. I'd like to push him right off his motorbike and then slap him. But I know violence is not the answer. So, I guess I'd like to MAKE him listen to a lecture about women's rights and to make him attend these lectures DAILY for years to come. And have him cook food for the women in his family every day and take care of the kids in his household. And I suppose that while I'm playing god, I'd also like to bless him with a uterus and a menstrual cycle.

I was walking down the street of the neighborhood I'm currently living in with my classmate, Samia. It's a nice neighborhood, there are watchmen in front of some of the gates, big houses etc. It's located right off the main road. Anyway, we were walking toward the main road at 4pm, and there were a couple men a little further down the road. I heard a slow-moving scooter idling behind me, but didn't look back in case there was a man on the scooter (normally when you make eye contact with them, the "Eve teasing" happens). Plus, I didn't really think anything of it, since vehicles drive very close to pedestrians in India anyway, and it was broad daylight on a safe neighborhood street and I was walking with a friend and there were other people out in plain sight. Right as I heard the scooter come up behind me, as I was about to look back and glare at the driver for driving so close, a hand reached out, and groped me, as the man the hand belonged to drove right by. By the way, it's International Women's Day today. I was so mad. No, I AM so mad. I yelled as I watched the jeans jacket that said "fanaa" on the back get smaller and smaller as he drove lazily down the street but people didn't realize why I was calling out (there are many yells and loud noises and horns on the streets in India; people barely look up at loud noises). I joined a couple of friends down the street, and was just telling them what had just happened when the man on the scooter in the jeans jacket that said "fanaa" on the back DROVE BY AGAIN. He came close, but not too close because I was standing with 3 others by now and backed away from his scooter, and he looked straight at me as he drove by slowly. I glared. Then, I started telling the watchman and other man on the street what had happened in my broken Hindi and we all watched on helplessly as he grabbed another woman walking up the street. He drove away again. Too angry to think straight enough, I only got the last 4 digits of his license plate, 1222. The watchman told me to just pick up a rock and throw it at the man's head if that happened again, but that's REALLY not the solution I want (plus, he was wearing a helmet). It is SO unfair that this happens to women in India every single day. My friend Amanda, got groped by 3 boys on a bike when she was walking on the side of a busy street--what a great welcome to Jaipur. All of the girls in my group have been whistled at, creepily smiled at, tauntingly sung at, and stared at shamelessly by men of all ages. Tourism books on India all have "Eve teasing" warnings in their introductions. The newspapers have stories of gang rapes by men who just catch girls walking or even riding on their scooters in broad daylight, and violate them right on the side of the street. If you go out past sun down, you will barely see any women on the road. On any given street, the ratio of men to women will literally be 50:2 (the 2 being me and the female friend I'm with are walking down the street) or higher.

What's worse is that sex ratios in India fell according to the last census (the next census will come out next year). The sex ratio is defined as the number of females per 1000 males. In India, in 1991, the sex ratio was 925. In 2001, it became 897. In Rajasthan in 1991, it was 916 and fell to 909 in 2001.

Between 2000 and 20001, the Christian Medical Association of India conducted a case study in which it recorded sex ratios in accordance with the sex of the previous child at 1 public hospital in Delhi, recording 11267 births. These were the results:

-If a couple was having its second child and the first child was a male, the sex ratio at birth for the second child was 959. If the couple was having its second child and the first child was a female, the sex ratio at birth for the second child was 542.
-If a couple was having its third child and they already had 1 male and 1 female child, the sex ratio at birth for the third child was 558. If the couple was having its third child and they already had 2 female children, the sex ratio at birth for the third child was 219.

(An informative Economist article detailing the extent of this missing women phenomenon all over the world (thanks Mariette): http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15636231)

Other blood boiling factors (many not just applicable to India):
-It is so easy in India to find out the gender of your child and abort it if the fetus is female, even though this is illegal.
- On legal medical forms for children in India, only the father's name is asked to be filled, as if the mother has no role in the guardianship of the child.
-Women who wear anything above the knee are often seen as "asking for it."
-Women who are raped are often looked at as impure and made outcasts of society.
-Girls and women that are menstruating are, in many families, not supposed to go to a temple or touch anything or are sent away to a hut for menstruating women located far from their homes because anything they touch during this period of time will be considered "impure".
-The PRINCIPAL OF A SCHOOL, a supposedly well-educated man, had his pregnant wife go to a "baba" to get a pill that will make the baby be born male, and when the baby was a female, abandoned his wife and child. A girl on my program is living with a host-mother who is currently living alone because her husband wanted their baby to be a boy, but it was a girl, so he wanted more children.
-Many girls are looked at as a financial burden--not only do their parents have to save up for dowries, but their daughter grows up (or is married off as a child--60% of girls in Rajasthan are married before the age of 18, leading to extremely high maternal and infant mortality rates, which are correlated with larger family size) and leaves and becomes the daughter of her husband's household. She won't be able to help support her parents in their old age.
-Many believe that last rites are only allowed to be performed by a son--otherwise, apparently, the soul does not go to heaven (bullshit.)
-Men's indiscretions and inappropriate sexual gestures/acts are overlooked because men's "needs" are natural, apparently more natural than women's and men just can't help it, whereas similar actions on a woman's part label her as a woman of "loose morals," and other worse labels.

Another extremely troubling fact is this: "In a national health survey, 51% of Indian men said that wife-beating is justified under certain circumstances; more surprisingly, 54% of women agreed--if, for instance, a wife burns dinner or leaves the house without permission. More than 100,000 young Indian women die in fires every year, many of them 'bride burnings' or other instances of domestic abuse." (Super Freakonomics)

I'm still mad. I am mad that women in India are so disempowered that more than half think that they deserve to be beat, under ANY circumstance, much less burning dinner and leaving the house without permission! I am mad that we are treated as lesser beings--with lesser needs, wants, desires, and goals, and we deserve lesser things, lower seats, lesser power, lesser education. On a lower rung. I'm mad that I feel so vulnerable. That a man can violate me out in broad daylight and have the nerve to come back for round two a couple minutes later. That I took a rickshaw back to my house instead of walking through the neighborhood at 6:30 pm (before sunset) because I did not feel safe. That I keep looking over my shoulder when I heard the sound of an engine anywhere behind me (aka every time I'm on the street), and that that will probably continue for a little while. That some more independence was taken away from me today.

I can't imagine how a woman who has been raped feels. What an utterly unthinkable and horrifying violation! Watch and listen to Sunitha Krishnan, an inspiring woman who was gang raped and has been working against sexual trafficking and harassment (and has been beaten up 14 times and had a co-worker friend who was murdered on rescue missions):
http://www.ted.com/talks/sunitha_krishnan_tedindia.html
http://www.ted.com/speakers/sunitha_krishnan.html

I am enraged. I want to shout and make a ruckus and do something about these gross human rights violations. And you should feel the same way. Don't be sad. Don't say it's too bad this is how society is. Be mad that this is how the society YOU live in is and do something about it. If you are a man, treat women with the same dignity and respect you have come to expect from others. If you are a woman, accept nothing less than the dignity and respect you deserve, and if you don't get it, don't be afraid to shout.

"The sense that thousands and millions of children and young people are being sexually violated and that there’s this huge silence about it around me angers me."
Sunitha Krishnan

By the way, Rajya Sabha voting on the Women's Reservation Bill was deferred today.